Maggie Crane, spokeswoman for Slay, tells Daily RFT today that the mayor is referring to the federal government's use of drones and says that St. Louis may at some point consider the tool, but has no immediate plans.

"Do these solutions make sense?" she says, "And if it does, it's worth exploring as a crime-fighting tool."

Crane points us to a short comment Slay made in a Post-Dispatch article published over the weekend, in which the mayor says, "We're proceeding in a very cautious way. First we must look at the technology and if we decide to use the technology, to what extent it will be used."

That article explores Police Chief Sam Dotson's "vision of modern policing," which apparently would include a drone circling Busch Stadium to watch for terrorists or silently pursuing a criminal who thought a police chase had already ended.

Dotson reportedly wrote a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration as a preliminary step toward seeking approval for unmanned and unarmed flight, the P-D reports. St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce also apparently wrote to the FAA expressing her "enthusiastic support." We've reached out to both the police department and circuit attorney's office today and will update if we get more details.

"They're here whether we like them or not," Crane says. "So if they're going to be here, is there a way we can use them as a crime-fighting tool?"

It's something the city will keep an eye on, she says.

Dotson tells the P-D that this is about public safety and that the drones would not have capabilities beyond helicopters and would not do anything that existing laws don't already protect. The paper says that dozens of police agencies around the country have submitted FAA applications.

Still, even the mention of drones as a potential tool for St. Louis has already sparked privacy concerns from groups that argue the technology is a significant expansion of government surveillance and can lead to Fourth Amendment violations.